1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for accurately computing the location of a mobile subscriber device connected in a wireless network. More particularly, the present invention relates to the use of a predictive filter, including a measurement weight algorithm to decrease standard deviation error, to more correctly determine the location of a mobile subscriber.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communications networks, such as mobile wireless telephone networks, have become increasingly prevalent over the past decade. These wireless communications networks are commonly referred to as “cellular networks”, because the network infrastructure is arranged to divide the service area into a plurality of regions called “cells”. A terrestrial cellular network includes a plurality of interconnected base stations, or base nodes, that are distributed geographically at designated locations throughout the service area. Each base node includes one or more transceivers that are capable of transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals, such as radio frequency (RF) communications signals, to and from mobile user nodes, such as wireless telephones, located within the coverage area. The communications signals include, for example, voice data that has been modulated according to a desired modulation technique and transmitted as data packets. As can be appreciated by one skilled in the art, network nodes transmit and receive data packet communications in a multiplexed format, such as time-division multiple access (TDMA) format, code-division multiple access (CDMA) format, or frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) format, which enables a single transceiver at the base node to communicate simultaneously with several mobile nodes in its coverage area.
In recent years, a type of mobile communications network known as an “ad-hoc” network has been developed to address the needs of multiple mobile device communication beyond traditional infrastructure coverage. In this type of network, each user terminal (hereinafter “mobile node”) is capable of operating as a base station or router for other mobile nodes within the network, thus eliminating the need for a fixed infrastructure of base stations. Accordingly, data packets being sent from a source mobile node to a destination mobile node are typically routed through a number of intermediate mobile nodes before reaching the destination node.
More sophisticated ad-hoc networks are also being developed which, in addition to enabling mobile nodes to communicate with each other as in conventional ad-hoc networks, further enable the mobile nodes to access fixed networks and communicate with other types of user terminals, such as those on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the Internet. Details of these advanced types of ad-hoc networks are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/897,790 entitled “Ad Hoc Peer-to-Peer Mobile Radio Access System Interfaced to the PSTN and Cellular Networks”, filed on Jun. 29, 2001, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/815,157 entitled “Time Division Protocol for an Ad-Hoc, Peer-to-Peer Radio Network Having Coordinating Channel Access to Shared Parallel Data Channels with Separate Reservation Channel”, filed on Mar. 22, 2001, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/815,164 entitled “Prioritized-Routing for an Ad-Hoc, Peer-to-Peer, Mobile Radio Access System”, filed on Mar. 22, 2001, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/988,001 entitled “A System and Method for Computing the Location of a Mobile Terminal in a Wireless Communications Network”, filed on Nov. 16, 2001, and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,453,168 and 6,665,333, the entire content of each being incorporated herein by reference.
The mobile nodes of such networks may assume any number of random positions within the network, making exact node location determinations when needed difficult. For computing node geographical coordinates in such ad-hoc wireless networks, algorithms in use at individual nodes in typical networks use the “Time Of Arrival” (TOA) measurement technique. As can be appreciated by one skilled in the art, a TOA measurement provides the distance between mobile nodes and wireless routers, which are used as references, for computing the mobile node position. The measurements are based upon signal propagation times, specifically the time a signal needs for traveling at the speed of light between a mobile node and fixed stations.
Due to various propagation factors, the modem that makes the TOA measurement does not receive direct signals all the time, but may also receive a number of secondary signals. Such modems, through the use of antennas and associated signal processing, serve to transmit and receive various data packets with the assistance of specific supporting elements in the physical layer, such as modulation, coding, and framing, and also the MAC and radio resource management layers. Each includes an apparatus to estimate position and velocity using either the Time Of Arrival (TOA) of signals received by the modem, their Phase Of Arrival (POA), their Strength Of Arrival (SOA), their Frequency Of Arrival (FOA), or a combination of such techniques.
Since secondary signals are reflections of the direct signal, each secondary signal travels a longer distance and therefore has a longer transmission path. In most cases, the measurement modem can identify and separate direct signals from secondary signals, and provide a correct propagation time. However, in some cases the direct signal may be too weak when compared with reflected signals to accomplish this. In such cases, the modem is not able to determine the correct propagation time.
The precision of range measurement in indoor areas, or in areas with very tall buildings, is often very poor due to propagation conditions specific for these types of environments. As a result, typical methods for computing the location of a mobile terminal based on propagation ranges measured in “urban canyons” or inside buildings produce very inaccurate results.
Several systems and methods can be used to improve the precision of the computation of mobile terminal position calculations within environments, such as a city, and inside buildings. For example, these systems and methods can consider information obtained from a large number of references (routers) on which to base the computation. These systems and methods can also increase their sampling frequency, and/or implement predictive filters to attempt to improve location accuracy.
In order to reach the required level of precision, these systems and methods need to sacrifice other services. For example, systems and methods that use more than four reference points (e.g., terminals) or frequent sampling to perform these types of “location services” operations require additional bandwidth and processing time. Since bandwidth is limited, implementing this technique will result in a decrease in the bandwidth available for other services provided by the wireless network. The situation can be somewhat improved by considering a more efficient protocol for performing the time-of-flight (TOF) query on the signals transmitted to and from the reference points. However, tests show that increasing the number of reference points to more than eight does not provide substantial improvement of accuracy. Increasing the sampling frequency for range measurement also requires more bandwidth that is thus made unavailable for other services.
As an alternative to increasing the number of reference points or sampling frequency, it is possible to implement a predictive filter to improve the accuracy of location services operations performed inside buildings. Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method to implement a predictive filter to improve the precision of mobile terminal position calculations within certain environments, such as in a city and inside a building.